As I gained experience managing and evaluating online education through Writer’s Digest—and teaching online courses myself—I began to field more questions from authors who were curious about doing it themselves, but didn’t know where to start. And so I came up with the following tips.

One big caveat is that I am not an expert in curriculum design or creative writing pedagogy (either online or offline!). So I invite those who have more formal study and knowledge to share suggestions in the comments.

The primary motivation for adult writers who take online classes is to:

Acquire new skills

Complete a writing project (be motivated and be held accountable)

Get personalized feedback and instruction

People also appreciate the immediacy of online education in serving their needs. Freedom and flexibility are often critical for adults deciding to take an online course—more important than even price.

A course’s success depends greatly on understanding or anticipating the needs of students, creating and delivering material that leads to learning and engagement, and thus producing the outcomes they most desire.

Deciding What to Teach

Here are some starting questions for those who have never taught online before.

What will the course focus on? If you’re new to online teaching, choose a class you’ve taught multiple times, where you have confidence in your approach and knowledge base. It’s also easier from a marketing perspective to teach topics you’re well-known for, that you have demonstrated success in, or that you know would interest your community or clients.

How long will the course run? Unless you’re enthusiastic about “boot camp” style courses that run in a weekend or a week, I recommend a minimum of four weeks and a maximum of twelve weeks. You could also choose to create a self-study, but this post focuses on writing courses with a specific start and end date. (The best writing classes have interaction and engagement with an instructor who can offer feedback/critique.)

How much personal attention will be offered? This would include critique/feedback, live office hours of some kind, forum discussion, or even an in-person component. The more interactive the course, the more expensive it generally is, but obviously the more time the instructor must commit.

Course Benefit and Structure

With writing courses for adults, it’s important to focus on what the students will achieve or have in hand at the finish line. The course might focus on one large-scale project (first 25 pages of a manuscript, a completed essay or story) that is worked on and submitted to the instructor for feedback; or it might focus on completing a series of smaller assignments. While readings can help illustrate important principles or lessons of craft and technique, any energy devoted to group discussions about readings are almost never a good use of student time and energy.

Most online courses are best when there’s one goal, focus, or lesson per week. More often, and students won’t be able to keep up; less often, and students will become disengaged.

All courses to be effective must incorporate regular opportunities for Q&A with the instructor—basically, office hours. I recommend about one live session per week, whether through text-based chat or audio/video conference.

Course Lessons or Lectures

An online writing course can’t just rely on student production of material for critique. The instructor needs to provide writing instruction in some form, usually on a weekly basis. What constitutes a lecture can be very flexible. It might be:

A live video conference session using software such as Zoom (and recorded for students who can’t attend). This is usually the most intimidating for new online instructors, as well as experienced—it’s more or less like doing a live webinar. I don’t recommend that you be merely a talking head, but that you have visuals to share, and budget plenty of Q&A/break time.

Recorded audio or video lessons using software such as Camtasia or Screenflow.

Written lecture: using PowerPoint or Keynote helps incorporate visuals (preferable for some types of material), but text only can work well.

Always build in next steps or actions. Students will learn better if they’re given a specific task or action after watching a lecture or series of lectures. Make them put what they’ve learned to work, or get them writing. By incorporating action steps into your curriculum, you will see satisfaction skyrocket, because people feel like they are accomplishing, creating, or learning something. Progress toward goals is very inspiring.

Course Community and Discussion Area

Students will find a course more valuable if they meet other like-minded people with whom they might even continue a relationship after the course ends. For this to happen, the course needs a discussion and community area for posting. The easiest method by far is to create a private Facebook group for the course, but you could also create a private WordPress site with forum capability through a plugin such as BBPress.

Instructor Critique and Engagement

Instructor feedback or interaction is critical to a writing-focused course. A critique can be written or audio recorded and delivered in private, and/or done in a more traditional workshop manner, where all students can see and benefit from observing the instructor’s critique of the work.

I’ve found that—unless students are in a university program—it’s very hard to mandate that other students give feedback. And usually, it’s not desirable to mandate feedback unless the students are insightful in giving it. Good feedback doesn’t happen by accident, and writers need training in how to give it, which may be outside the purview of the course being taught. In any event, in most non-degree writing courses, the students are seeking the insights of the instructor, and not the other students.

Student satisfaction is often tied directly to how they feel the instructor interacted with their work, their forum/discussion posts, and/or their questions during office hours. Responding in the forum or otherwise being present in the forum, proactively posting questions and doing check-ins, and in general “showing up” is vital. Students can tell when you’re phoning it in, or just posting lessons then disengaging.

Protecting Instructor Time

I recommend two levels of registration for any class involving critique:

Premium registration (usually limited in number): Everything in the basic, but allows for more material to be critiqued, more revision and feedback, or more one-on-one time with the instructor

Students love having a choice because they may not have the time or ability to produce a large amount of work during a particular time, and/or may be mainly interested in the curriculum.

Recommended Technology

I favor the following tools for online courses.

I use the Zippy Courses plugin installed on WordPress. When students register for a course, they receive login credentials and can immediately access any curriculum made available prior to the official course start date. Zippy allows you to pre-load lessons and assignments and schedule them for release on specific days. There are other teaching platforms available—some with wonderful features—but (1) they’re probably more expensive and (2) they may not support having specific start and end dates to your course. For me, the latter is essential if you want all students to go through the same experience together with you, and if you want to avoid doing a self-study or a continuous course that’s always open for enrollment.

Zoom: This is a simple teleconference tool ideal for office hours or even live lectures. It allows everyone to see and hear each other (assuming you have a webcam), plus you can share your screen and do text chat. Students can dial in through a phone number for audio only, and you can record sessions for students who miss.

Camtasia or Screenflow: both are excellent tools for recording audiovisual lectures but require purchase.

Private Facebook groups work great for the discussion and community aspect of an online course because nearly everyone is familiar with it and logs in at least once a day.

For Video-Based Lectures or Lessons

These are some of the principles I encourage you to adopt.

For audiovisual lecture delivery: Hopefully, you already use PowerPoint, Keynote, Prezi, or some other slide-based presentation tool to accompany your lectures. If not, I suggest you develop slides unless you have other visuals. Ideally, your lecture doesn’t consist solely of audio with a static visual (or a talking head); this leads to student boredom and distraction. Use summary lists, imagery, graphics, and other visuals to reinforce the points you’re talking about. Imageshelp engagement a lot. When you can’t think of anything, add a cat GIF. Attention will skyrocket. (Only half joking.)

Break up your lecture into 3-6 minute increments. If you’ve ever used Lynda, you know the model. It’s less daunting to tackle a video lecture when things are broken down into their smallest steps or components. (For efficiency, when you record a lecture, you can certainly do it all in one take, while giving yourself a pause between lessons or sections. Later on, using Screenflow or Camtasia, you can break up a long video into the intended lessons.)

For live lectures, build in question breaks. Almost every live lecture should leave 5-10 minutes at the end for student questions. I also build in at least one additional opportunity for students to ask questions. This would ideally be halfway through, but you should base it on when you think the most questions are likely to arise (e.g., during the most confusing or complicated material). If it makes sense, build in a third break for questions.

Rather than using your computer’s built-in external microphone, you may need to purchase an external microphone for best possible results. Apple’s standard-issue earbuds—the ones with a built-in microphone—also work very well.

Find an enclosed room where you will not be interrupted. Unplug your phone and turn off your cell phone ringer. If necessary, post a sign on the door that says, “Recording in progress.” There is nothing worse than being distracted during a live session or recording, trust me.

Be prepared to share your slides in PDF form. This will depend on the nature of the session, but one of the first things students will ask for is a copy of your lecture. If you’re uncomfortable doing this, you should prepare a handout with the key ideas, lessons, resources, websites, or tips from your presentation. Having something in writing, like a tip sheet, is very helpful with online courses, so that students don’t have to search through recordings to find that 1 minute when you referenced a particular resource.

It’s Your Turn

If you’ve taught online writing courses, I’d love to hear what has worked (or not) for you and your students. And if you’ve been a student in an online writing course, tell us about any positive experiences—what made the course valuable to you?

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Jane Friedman

Jane Friedman (@JaneFriedman) has 20 years of experience in the publishing industry, with expertise in digital media strategy for authors and publishers. She is the co-founder and editor of The Hot Sheet, the essential newsletter on the publishing industry for authors.

In addition to being a columnist for Publishers Weekly, Jane is a professor with The Great Courses, which released her 24-lecture series, How to Publish Your Book. She also has a book forthcoming from the University of Chicago Press, The Business of Being a Writer (March 2018).

Jane speaks regularly at conferences and industry events such as BookExpo America, Digital Book World, and the AWP Conference, and has served on panels with the National Endowment for the Arts and the Creative Work Fund. Find out more.

Thanks for this great post, Jane! After teaching for many years in MFA programs, in addition to teaching online for a Bay Area University, I now teach online novel writing courses and introductory fiction courses through my own online school. I earn my primary income as a writer, and enjoy teaching but not driving to a campus! Zoom works great for my classes. I tend to provide a lot of video and written lessons, using a range of media. The challenge is finding ways to keep students engaged in online discussion boards. I find that assignments directly related to the… Read more »

I am skeptical of the benefits of any kind of formalized instruction when it comes to writing, especially writing books.

Granted, there are tons of good materials out there for people wanting to learn: podcasts, conferences, books, etc. But the only education that is going to make a lick of difference for the apprentice writer is the self-motivated kind. Formalizing that education, with assignments and the like, is like dissecting the frog: it can technically be done, but the thing dies in the process.

Hi Alan, I don’t think the problem is formalised instruction when it comes to writing books. How dry or how inspiring a class is depends on who’s teaching and who’s learning. I think the real challenge for fiction writers these days is to resist having their unique voice—not style or narrative voice (point of view), but their writing voice—usurped by sets of rules mostly adapted from screenplays and play writing. That said, no one can drive a car without becoming skilled in the art of driving without having to think about the mechanics of the art. The driver’s attention must… Read more »

Thanks for this interesting post, Jane. It might be worth mentioning that there are some good free platforms out there for online courses. I’m not saying Zippy Courses is not good value, I haven’t used it, but for someone putting a first toe in the water a free one might be a better option. I created a rather innovative online novel writing course and used Eliademy.com as my platform. It’s a free online school software designed for philanthropic reasons by two former Nokia executives. I found it more than adequate for my needs, and seemed to work well. The real… Read more »

Hi Malcolm – Thanks so much for the platform/tech recommendations. I’m familiar with Moodle (and its limitations, as you seem to have experienced), but not Eliademy. Will check it out! I also just recently became aware of Wet Ink, which isn’t free, but ideal for courses where workshopping is a critical component.

I wanted to teach an online writing course but when I gauged interest, I found most writers want to know about branding, marketing or publishing rather than actual writing. As I’ve been teaching graphic design for five years, I’m going to offer a short course on branding for authors 🙂 I was half tempted to actually do a course on teaching methods and learning styles to help other course creators!

Jane, these are great tips. I wished I’d read this before I taught online courses (also for Writer’s Online Workshops, among others)! One issue I had with teaching online classes, which eventually led me to give it up, was that if the instructor and participants’ motivation or “drive” aren’t synchronized, it’s difficult to develop the online relationship. Of course, many students are proactive and actively responsive — doing the work, participating, critiquing others’ work. However, many students also leave their assignments until the last minute and then expect the instructor to work around the clock to respond to them all.… Read more »

I particularly liked this. Especially in the current climate of uncertainty and exclusion in the world at large.

Two of my favorite relationships, however, were *because* of our different physical time zones. One of my students was a soldier deployed in Iraq, and another was the wife of a soldier stationed in Germany. We all went out of our way to find times when we could connect in real-time, despite the time our clocks displayed.

I recommend two levels of registration for any class involving critique: Basic registration: All curriculum, lessons, community discussion features, instructor office hours or Q&A opportunities, plus a basic amount of critique/feedback Premium registration (usually limited in number): Everything in the basic, but allows for more material to be critiqued, more revision and feedback, or more one-on-one time with the instructor Great points, Jane. Last year I signed up for Course Builders Lab to turn my years of editing into writing workshops. They suggest first learning what people want help with (in your field) rather than focusing on what you THINK… Read more »

Hi Sandra – Thanks for sharing your experience! I’ve also found that student participation is incredibly variable – some fall behind right away or don’t even intend on participating from the start. I avoid making any promises in the course description as to peer critique, review, feedback, discussion, and so on. Unless the course is somehow graded/evaluated for credit, I haven’t found an effective way to mandate that students engage with each other (or even with me!). So I accept this dynamic as part of non-degree classes, but usually there are at least three to five VERY engaged students (and… Read more »

These are great tips! Thanks, Jane. I have taught lots of in-person writing courses and along the way took lots of online classes. My motive for the latter, I’ve realized, was at first an audience, then largely community, and finally fellow readers and stealing ideas/materials for my own teaching. With rare exceptions, feedback from fellow students came to seem poor or irrelevant to my actual work and struggles. And relationships were rarely made or lasted—I think a real hurdle for online relationships is that humans seem to require knowing that the other person is “okay,” basically a good person. (This… Read more »

Hi Richard – Great to get your insights here, thank you. In all my writing courses, the weakest feedback was from my peers. To be fair, I think some of that problem can be put on instructors’ shoulders – constructive critique/feedback needs to be taught and modeled for students; it is not intuitive. (Makes me think I should put together a course on exactly that topic!)

Hi Richard, You wrote: Here’s a pet peeve. Instructors typically say the class is about new work, but in practice favor obviously polished work. Who can help it? And I’ve been less stressed when I’ve used classes for work already in progress. New work is rough, has problems by definition, but it’s a real art to balance feedback with encouragement. As you know, it can take years for something to find its form, which makes so much feedback irrelevant (that word again!) or possibly harmful. I think the key to looking at new work is not to critique it but… Read more »

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About Jane

I have more than 20 years of experience in the book and magazine publishing industry, with expertise in digital media and the future of authorship. I speak around the world at events such as BookExpo America, Frankfurt Book Fair, and Digital Book World, and have keynoted writing conferences such as The Muse & The Marketplace. Read more.